Republicans Settle on Generous Budget Bill

Republicans last week outbid President Clinton for this year's
education budget.

A team of congressional appropriators offered to raise Department of
Education spending $3.5 billion--$673 million more than Mr. Clinton
requested--for the fiscal year that begins this week, according to
officials familiar with the proposal. Republican leaders and White
House aides late last week haggled over unresolved issues in a mammoth
spending plan designed to settle the federal budget for the full year.
Most education issues had been settled as of last Thursday evening.

Congressional and Clinton administration officials were confident
they could reach a final compromise in time to keep the government open
for the Oct. 1 beginning of the 1997 fiscal year.

"It's quite extraordinary that the [Republican] majority has finally
realized that it's important to provide substantial funding for
education," said Undersecretary of Education Marshall S. Smith. "It's
accurate to say that the public pressure has been the biggest factor"
in persuading Republicans to go beyond Mr. Clinton's request.

But a Republican involved in writing the plan said the majority had
a more practical reason for giving in to Mr. Clinton.

"We can legislate, but the president has to sign it," said Rep. John
Edward Porter, R-Ill., the chairman of the House subcommittee that
writes the education-spending plan. "It's an election year, and people
would rather fight their differences at home."

Everybody Wins

Two weeks before the end of the fiscal year, the House and Senate
sent signals that they wanted to at least match Mr. Clinton's
school-spending request. But they offered a different list of programs
they wanted to boost.

When faced with the question of whether to favor GOP priorities or
the president's, Congress last week appeared to choose both, proposing
to spend a total of $28.7 billion in fiscal 1997.

House Republicans sought an increase in special education spending,
so they would add $784 million to raise the program's spending to $4
billion, sources said. That would be $483 million more than Mr. Clinton
sought.

To satisfy the president, Republicans matched the $491 million he
requested for the Goals 2000: Educate America Act and would pump an
extra $464 million into the Title I remedial-education program, raising
its total to $7.7 billion.

White House and congressional leaders spent last Friday morning in
talks and hoped to complete a compromise the House would pass that
evening, said Elizabeth Morra, a spokeswoman for the House
Appropriations Committee.

The Senate was then expected to pass the final compromise over the
weekend and send it to President Clinton in time to for him to sign the
bill before the new fiscal year.

Va. Waiver Unresolved

The only major education issue unresolved late last week involved a
waiver Virginia officials sought to allow their participation in Goals
2000. The state wants to spend its Goals 2000 money on computers and
software. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley denied that request
because he says the law requires the state write a thorough
school-reform plan that explains how purchasing technology would
accomplish those goals.

The Education Department would prefer that Virginia allow school
districts to compete for Goals 2000 money to implement their own reform
plans.

In a separate section of the bill, Sen. James M. Jeffords, R-Vt.,
sought $40 million to pay for repairing schools here. The $40 million
would be added to $40.7 million in federal money already sent to the
District of the Columbia.

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